I often wonder what it must be like to believe in something so fervently that it controls your life, like for religious fanatics or gossip junkies. It's really those people who drive society, especially in the political arena. I seriously think that if I could fake enthusiasm for some idiocy, any idiocy, I could rule the world. But I'm positive that it's not worth the effort.

Despotism is a fickle business. One day you're on top of the world, the next you're dangling from the end of a rope. Or if you're really lucky, your decaying corpse gets to lie in state for a week while people who never met you wander by your casket. (If you're really, really lucky, you get to lie in state forever in a glass coffin. Now that's effective despotism!) In either case, both government and people's lives go on without you.

Take, for example, Skeletor. He's got the chops for world domination. He's got a wicked blue and violet armored motif. He's got a yellow skull for a head. He wears a sinister hood. He's got spectacularly complex plans that always seem to work, at least for a moment or two at a time. And he's got passion for world domination in spades.

Skeletor spent years opposing He-Man, for no apparent reason other than the fact that He-Man likes to fight things. (I mean, he REALLY likes to fight things. Seriously, He-Man. Look into some anger management classes.) If it wasn't for the relentless assault of He-Man, the pro-establishment supporting alter-ego of a cowardly prince, Skeletor would have likely taken over the realm of Eternia with little effort. Beast-Man, Evil-Lyn, and Tri-Klops certainly weren't going to tell someone with a bad ass skull for a face "no."

But where has all that sadomasochistic combat in fetish gear gotten him? Where is Skeletor now? Has Snake Mountain been repossessed for lack of property tax payments? Do people still circulate the money with his face on it? Are giant pro-Skeletor propaganda posters of Skeletor with his skeleton staff on his skeleton throne circulated on eBay? Did Skeletor make any mark on the world worth mentioning?

No, Skeletor has returned to the toy box from whence he sprang, a discarded and forgotten piece of history from a time now passed. And we didn't even get to watch 19 continuous hours of his departure on CNN. Sorry, Skeletor.

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Hell, it's my blog I can bitch if I want to. And it's Friday the 13th, so I'll kill someone with a machete while wearing a hockey mask if I want to, too.

PayPal really knows how to get my goat. One month ago tomorrow, I shipped a 24 pound package via USPS Economy Parcel Post to Argentina. (The contents were some Masters of the Universe figures I sold for a friend on eBay.) The buyer has grown impatient after a mere 3 weeks of waiting for an international Economy Parcel Post (read as "slow boat") package and has earlier this week opened a dispute with PayPal for the cost of the item. Of course, this means that PayPal has put a "temporary hold" on my account in the amount of the payment. If this were a $29.50 item, that's be no big deal. But it's not. It's a $295.00 item.

So now, my Paypal account is essentially useless to me until PayPal realizes that I did ship the item, the buyer is just being incredibly impatient, and I'm in the clear. My past experience with Paypal tells me that this will take about 90 days. Meanwhile, PayPal will be hassling me to pay them what I "owe" them (HA!) and I will be unable to take eBay payments through PayPal. As anyone who sells on eBay knows, this means that it is pointless to try to sell anything on eBay. Therefore, no income for me for 3 months.

Once again, let me say to you people out there: PayPal sucks. If you use it, learn to enjoy the sensation of someone grabbing you by the balls and squeezing while ramming a Louisville Slugger up your ass. Fuck you, PayPal.

(Granted, I am well aware that the problem in this case is not actually PayPal, but the dipshit who decided that economy international postage should arrive on his doorstep within 3 weeks of shipping. But since I'm not currently in the mood to travel to Argentina to avenge this disruption in my life, I'm attacking the messenger. PayPal doesn't care.)

On a completely unrelated note, why do MLB and the NFL have Breast Cancer Awareness Months? Exactly how many players in either of those leagues are female? In 2002, only 3,000 more women in the U.S. were killed by accidents than died from killer breasts. (That's less than 10 a day in a country with 300 million people.) When was the last time you heard of an Accident Awareness Campaign? Breast cancer isn't even the largest killer of women in America. It doesn't even make the top 5. Alzheimer's Disease is credited with killing more women than breast cancer. (However, a Alzheimer's Awareness Month wouldn't make much of an impression, as everyone who cared to promote it would forget about it by the time it arrived.) I suggest that breast cancer is so widely championed these days simply because it is the only one of the top ten killers of women that doesn't also kill large numbers of men.

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